


parting gift

by marshmall0



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Loss of Virginity, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshmall0/pseuds/marshmall0
Summary: “What are you doing?” he asks quietly once she pulls away.She pauses. It’s strange. The weight of her perched on top of his thighs is familiar and not at the same time. She smells the same as him — they use the same bland white bars of soap provided to them by the Science Department. Clinical and efficient, with just a hint of human musk peeking through.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Sephiroth
Kudos: 32





	parting gift

**Author's Note:**

> FWIW, Aerith is ~14 and Seph ~17 in this verse. Ages are very loose and not canon compliant.

“They’re sending me to Wutai,” he says. He keeps his gaze trained to the floor. His new leather boots — her bare feet. He wonders where she got the pink polish on her toes. He wonders if the metal feels cold to her. He can’t remember how it had felt to him when he was younger.

Her entire demeanor sharpens. Gone is the sweet but simple girl the Shinra Science Department thinks they know. Aerith is sweet, but Sephiroth has never known her to be simple.

“When?” she asks, practically hissing.

“Next week,” he answers. Miserable. 

She frowns, then opens the door wider, gesturing him inside. “Come in, Seph.”

If she were anyone else, he would correct her. Ifalna had started calling him that when he was young (against Hojo’s repeated requests) because Aerith could not pronounce his full name. Ifalna is long gone now, but it reminds him of the way she tried to mother him from a distance and so he cannot bring himself to make Aerith stop.

He stops once inside, stands and hovers near the doorway. He can hear her shut and lock the door in a pretense of privacy.

“Sit on the couch,” she tells him. “I’ll be right behind you.”

So he goes and she follows.

He isn’t expecting her to sling herself over his thighs, kneeling without fully settling there. She fixes him with a stern gaze and then she’s moving forward and he really does not know how to respond to this —and then she’s kissing him, soft but insistent. It’s like a dam breaking the way it makes him want to crumble to the ground under the weight of everything. A new life. War. Freedom, but conditional. And terrifying.

“What are you doing?” he asks quietly once she pulls away.

She pauses. It’s strange. The weight of her perched on top of his thighs is familiar and not at the same time. She smells the same as him — they use the same bland white bars of soap provided to them by the Science Department. Clinical and efficient, with just a hint of human musk peeking through.

She smiles at him, but it’s a strange one. “I just,” she starts, before shaking her head and trying again. “It’s silly. It doesn’t have to mean anything… but I want us to have something for ourselves. I think Hojo is going to make us do this eventually and I don’t want him to have the satisfaction of having our first time happen under duress, for science. I’d rather do it like this. Where its about us caring for each other.”

“Oh.”

“Is that… I mean, are you okay with that?” she asks, clearly nervous. She twirls her braid with one hand.

He takes a moment to think. He does care for Aerith — it’s hard not to. She’s a bright little thing with big green eyes that seem to sparkle with a love for life and good humor and all the things Sephiroth is not. But he does not think he cares for her in the way that maybe she means. He is unfamiliar with romance and sexually inexperienced.

Though he supposes she knows that already.

“Aerith… I do care for you, but I do not think I could be in a relationship with you,” he says bluntly. Hopes she understands.

She shoves at his chest playfully. He does not budge; she’s not strong enough to throw him off balance. “Not what I asked, you goof!”

Sephiroth frowns.

“Yeah, okay, I know you’re not goofy. But is this okay? Just… You’re my friend. I want to share this with you. Y’know, before you leave.”

He really doesn’t have a reference for that. If what he’s heard from the other SOLDIERs is true, sex does not hurt. In fact, it is supposed to be quite pleasant. So…there is no harm, surely?

He nods sharply. “It is okay.”

“Okay,” she says with a smile. “Tell me if anything feels weird. Or wrong. You can stop me whenever, Seph.”

Her mouth is on his again, after that, and it’s odd and it isn’t at the same time. On one hand: it’s Aerith. On the other hand: it’s _Aerith_. Still, it feels nice and he finds himself getting lost in the motions. In her lips on his, her hands on either side of his face, her hands in his hair. He isn’t quite sure where to put his own hands and settles for placing one on either side of her waist.

It’s slow and strange and oddly gentle. Sephiroth has not been gentle for a long time. They move together clumsy but unselfconscious. Aerith, at least, seems confident in this as she pulls his shirt over his head. She touches him easily, hands trailing down his neck, tracing the wide expanse of his shoulders, scratching lightly down the bare skin of his back.

It does not take long before Aerith is standing up, taking his hand in her own, and guiding him over to her bed. She goes down first, slipping the dress off and then laying on top of her covers in just her underthings.

He freezes.

She laughs at him but it isn’t mean, the way that the lab techs laugh at him sometimes. “C’mere,” she says, crooking one finger towards him. “Let’s figure this out.”

Neither of them have done this before, but they are quick studies. She explores his body nervously but still eager, still excited, tracing her hands over the muscles of his arms. Deltoid, biceps brachii, triceps brachii… He follows her explorations cautiously, feeling the surprising smoothness of her skin. Underneath him she is warm and soft, still growing into herself. She is developing a hint of curves but he suspects she may stay petite forever.

He finds himself enjoying it more than he thought he would.

He lays there on her blankets when they are done, feeling short of breath and fluttery. He feels like something has changed and he feels like he is still the same. He does not feel like himself. It’s very strange. His muscles are not tense and his chest heaves, slightly, with every breath. He feels… sticky.

“Sit up,” she’s saying as she begins to peel his torso off of her mattress. He goes easily, following where her hands place him, thoughtless in the same way when a technician begins moving him around.

He sits there cross-legged on her rumpled covers as he stares at the wall, covered in brightly-colored paint, and thinks of nothing. He doesn’t know how long he sits with his eyes blankly trained on the swirls of greenery and bright images of life — what life outside of Shinra Electric must be like.

He simply feels: the sweat on his skin drying, a slight burn in his thighs and his shoulders. The mattress dips underneath her weight when she moves to sit behind him. Then there is a pleasant sensation on his scalp as Aerith begins slowly combing through his hair with her fingers. Occasionally one of her fingernails lightly scrapes the exposed skin of his back. It makes him shiver, just slightly.

He settles back into his skin, slowly at first and then more rapidly at the sound of ventilation pipes clunking to life above them.

Aerith has settled down next to him — when had she stopped fiddling with his hair? He has no idea how long she’s been sitting there, looking smug and rueful at the same time.

“Hey there,” she greets him. “You like it?”

He shoots her a questioning look; she pokes at his shoulder in return.

He looks down at the braid slung over one of his bare shoulders.

“Oh,” he says. “That’s nice.”

“Thanks,” she says. “You good?”

He nods.

It hits him: he’ll be leaving this behind. The grey steel of the Science Department. Shinra Tower. The memory of Ifalna. Aerith.

“When you come back,” Aerith starts. “I hope that you burn this place down to the ground.”

He glances over at her with an eyebrow raised: a silent question.

“We deserved better,” she tells him. She sounds so confident. Where did she get that confidence from?

“We?”

“Yes,” she says. “You and me and Mom. We all did.”

He sits there and thinks for a moment. Privately, he agrees. He’s still not stupid enough to express his opinions out loud.

Aerith raises her head off his shoulder and fixes him with those warm, green eyes, so unlike his. “Give ‘em hell, SOLDIER.”

He gives her a rare smile, feels like his body is buzzing with pleasant endorphins, and says, “Aerith, you’re going to get that poor lab technician in trouble for teaching you swears.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this line in my WIP journal: "Aerith and Sephiroth fuck each other in a very self-pitying way….nerds"
> 
> Thanks for reading! I felt oddly nervous posting this, it's a little different from what I usually write. But I'm happy with it... Hope you enjoyed. Comments are always appreciated. <3


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